


The Moon

by aske



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, M/M, Noir vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:04:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aske/pseuds/aske
Summary: Shiki didn’t enjoy being an object of his curiosity. His usual blandness and the tough front he’d been showing over the years had prevented that from happening so far but now there was the weakness, glaringly obvious to someone like Orihara.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Moon as in the Tarot card.

“My condolences, Shiki-san,” Orihara offered after getting in the back of the limousine with him.

“But nobody died, Orihara-san,” Shiki answered indifferently, straightening up and schooling his features into an emotionless mask.

“I’m sorry,” Orihara apologized right away. “Apparently I was deceived into believing otherwise.”

“It’s all right."

“I have something for you, Shiki-san.” Orihara offered a binder that he had been carrying to Shiki.

Shiki accepted it with a nod and looked inside. Whatever documents were there were well put together but they didn’t seem to make any sense when he looked at them. He overlooked that fact, ascribing it to his current condition and the headache pulsating between his ears.

The car started moving. Orihara was explaining things to him, seemingly not paying any attention to him barely answering but obviously noticing because how could he not.

The whole ride was a blur in Shiki’s mind and when the car reached its destination and Orihara pocketed wads of cash without counting, he could only hope that what he had brought was really worth that much money.

“Shiki-san, I think you’ve lost your wedding ring,” Orihara observed. “It’s the first time I see you without it. Hopefully, you will find it soon,” he added before getting out of the car.

How come he'd known, Shiki wondered, and the next morning he put the ring back on his finger.

"Why are you wearing your wedding ring again?” Akabayashi asked him right away when he showed up at the headquarters.

“You should've told me not to take it off in the first place when I did after the funeral, Akabayashi-san. It was a bad idea to stop wearing it all of a sudden.”

“You’re not a married man anymore. There’s no point in you wearing a wedding ring.” Akabayashi looked at him strangely.

“I don’t need business associates noticing and wondering what happened.”

“Is it a secret that you’re a widower now? People don’t care about things like that or wedding rings anyway,” Akabayashi said with a shrug.

“Then why are you asking me about my ring? And since when is my private life not secret? Why should anyone but the higher-ups know? And do the others know? Do you think they might have told Orihara?”

“Orihara.” Akabayashi reflected on the name. “But of course he knows. Did he rub you the wrong way when you met yesterday? Maybe you should have taken some time off. At least from dealing with him.”

“That’s not necessary,” Shiki declared. “If everyone knows, there’s really no point in me wearing this anymore, though.”

He took the ring off and threw it into his pocket, forcing the irritation down, willing himself to fall back on the emotionless professionalism. It was the only thing that could have carried him through these days.

“It’s not like you could have pretended to be still married forever,” Akabayashi observed.

Shiki looked at the finger he’d been wearing the ring on, clearly marked by twelve years of it being there, the skin where it used to go pale and strangely shiny, as if the piece of metal had polished it with time. Staring at his hand, he wondered how long it would take for that mark to fade.

 

-

 

Orihara settled down on the couch in Shiki’s office with the papers he’d brought in his hands.

"You haven’t found your wedding ring yet, Shiki-san?” he asked. “Won’t your wife get upset?” He sounded quite good-natured.

“My wife died two weeks ago.”

“I apologize.” Orihara stood up and bowed, his hair falling into his eyes. “Please accept my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Shiki replied.

Orihara sat back down. He didn’t mention how he had seemingly known already the last time they’d met nor explained his persistence at asking about the ring.

“How did you know at our previous meeting?” Shiki was the one to ask instead. Either the question itself or the fact that he’d used informal speech he rarely used seemed to have taken Orihara by surprise.

“It was just a guess, Shiki-san,” he answered after a split second of hesitation.

“Of course.”

“When I first saw you on that day I thought you looked so upset as if someone close to you had just died,” Orihara said, a shadow of a self-assured smile passing over his features.

Shiki didn’t believe in anyone being able to read people that well, especially people like him, even if he had accidentally dropped his guard to a degree. Orihara must have acquired that information somewhere but what he chose to do was playing around instead of admitting it. Even in a situation such as this, he respected no rules of decency whatsoever.

“I’m really sorry,” he sounded convincing enough when he said that though.

Then again, pretending to help people who had been through a lot was one of the things he did, or so Shiki had heard. Once shown a weakness, he leeched onto it until there was just no way to detach him anymore. That was apparently how he had built a big part of his network of information gathering and influence.

Shiki rubbed the spot on his finger where the ring used to be. It felt vulnerable with how the skin there was so much softer.

Orihara looked at him pointedly, his eyes following his every movement, and Shiki busied himself with lighting up a cigarette.

Then they discussed business, Shiki’s thoughts wandering while at it. He had an unnerving feeling that Orihara was staring at him more than usual. He would have preferred for him not to know about what had happened but of course that was too much to ask. Orihara suffered from pathological curiosity. He just had to know things like that and if he didn’t know he was still going to analyze what little he could get a hold of to death and back and find out something, anything, to munch on and to use to torment his victim. Like a cruel child who had gotten a hold of a stray kitten and lacked tools of torment but could always think of something.

Shiki didn’t enjoy being an object of his curiosity. His usual blandness and the tough front he’d been showing over the years had prevented that from happening so far but now there was the weakness, glaringly obvious to someone like Orihara. Twelve years with one woman, cut short by disease that took her too quickly, with a whisper of ‘all this blood money we have, it must be the reason’ wrenched out of her mouth by pain and despair, nothing left but unimportant belongings, the child they might have had once gone too, a mere possibility lost years ago.

Then Orihara smiled and took off the ring he wore on his index finger. He rubbed the skin where it had been a moment ago in what seemed to be a mockery of what Shiki himself was unconsciously doing.

“The skin feels weird.” he observed before putting the ring back on. “It’s softer.”

“I think I will take some time off work,” Shiki announced, deciding right there and then. “So someone else will be meeting with you from now on.”

“I understand.” Orihara nodded and stood up. “Is there anything I can do to help, though?” he asked politely.

“Thank you for your concern,” Shiki replied in kind.

“I mean anything at all, Shiki-san,” Orihara added softly, looking him in the eye.

 

-

 

For one day Shiki thought it had been a great idea after all to take the time off. He packed up his wife’s belongings into paper boxes that he then took to the charity and the landfill and looked at his place with satisfaction after coming back home at the end of the day, as empty as it suddenly was.

The most valuable items she had owned: some jewelry, a few designer handbags and two furs waited on the couch to be picked up by someone from the organization to be sold.

That person was running late though and in the end didn’t show up at all.

Shiki spent the night in the kitchen cleaning his gun. Putting it apart and then back together. And then apart. And then back together, the clicking of parts comforting him even as his wife’s shadow hovered over her former possessions laid out on the living room couch.

Blood money. What kind of a word was that anyway? What nonsense she used to think about what he did for a living? He always answered truthfully if she asked but she must have assumed it was way worse anyway. She was never very bright. That might have been because he’d met her in a hostess bar and never cared either way.

A ringing phone woke him up in the morning, while he was still sitting at the kitchen table, the lights on and his gun half assembled.

“Can I bring a client to take a look at these things at your place, Aniki?” the voice at the other end of the line asked.

The idea was ridiculous and the man who was calling him must have been some kind of an idiot to even suggest it but Shiki agreed before he realized that, the pounding headache rendering him unable to act in a rational manner before he had his coffee and his pills and his gun put back together.

He opened the door an hour later and there was Orihara with the man who came for his wife's things. Whoever that was, he was so going to get fired.

“Hello, Shiki-san,” Orihara greeted him with a smile. “I’m here to buy something.”

Shiki’s eyes shot daggers at the man who had brought him.

Shiki wondered if he was supposed to move now that Orihara knew his address and how quickly he was supposed to do that exactly. His headache that he had just managed to dull was back full force.

Orihara’s eyes darted around the place as he walked up to the couch. Then he ignored the jewelry and started looking at the bags with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“I love that Gucci Dionysus.” He took the bag out of its white box.

A souvenir from Italy, Shiki thought.

“And that. Black Chanel Boy with ruthenium hardware. Nice.”

That one was a recent purchase, a novelty and a pain to acquire but Shiki didn’t remember his wife ever actually going out with it anywhere. It might have been too late.

“But I have no use for handbags,” Orihara relented, putting the Chanel bag back into its dust bag and its box. “Nor a woman who would wear one.”

Then Orihara’s hand buried itself in the black fur his wife used to own and once Shiki realized what he meant to do, his hands started shaking as he lit up a cigarette.

“I can use this though, I guess,” Orihara muttered to himself.

Sometimes, in the winter, he showed up in these elaborate black fur lined coats, looking ridiculous, and eerily beautiful at the same time.

Shiki felt sick at the thought of him prancing around in his deceased wife’s clothes.

He didn’t want to make a scene in front of the man who had brought Orihara there though so he let the transaction happen and waited for half an hour before calling him.

“Yes, Shiki-san? Weren’t you supposed to take the time off?” Orihara acted oblivious on the phone as if he hadn’t just met him this morning, in his own home no less.

How come he had maneuvered himself into his place Shiki couldn’t really understand. Maybe someone was leaking information to him but why he had used it for such childish pursuits, risking the very relationship that kept his business afloat and quite likely his own life as well, was anyone’s guess.

Did he gloat at the sight of these things on the couch, Shiki wondered. His wife reduced to these accoutrements and otherwise gone. How he had said he had no woman himself. No weakness like that.

“Return that fur to me,” Shiki demanded on the phone. “I don’t want you to have it.”

He was sure Orihara took note how the informal speech was becoming more frequent and how the perfectly choreographed business relation they had had for several years was now unraveling. And it was his own doing. What was his point, though?

“Should I bring it back to your place?” he inquired.

“Yes, I’ll pay you back for it. Send someone to bring it here.”

“I’m still around, Shiki-san. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Literally fifteen minutes later Orihara put the fur back on the couch, as if he had really been waiting for that call in front of the house. With all the other things gone, taken by the man who had been there with him before, that fur just looked like outerwear abandoned in a haste by someone upon coming into the apartment. As if the owner was around and would walk out of one of the rooms at any moment.

“It's a nice place,” Orihara commented looking around.

“I’ll bring you the money,” Shiki said.

“That man took the money I had paid him though, didn’t he? I'm not in a hurry, Shiki-san. If it’s a problem now, you can pay me back later.”

“Wait here,” Shiki commanded.

He went into the master bedroom to retrieve the needed amount from the safe, noting how for some reason Orihara had paid crazy amounts of money for that fur, way more than it had ever been worth.

He returned with a stack of banknotes.

Orihara was sitting on the couch, his own black summer coat draped next to the black fur over the back of it.

He was making himself at home.

“Here.” Shiki handed him the money.

Orihara stood up and took it. He turned around, reached for his coat and put the money into the inside pocket without counting, as always.

“Why can’t I have that fur?” he asked over his shoulder, his hand touching it again as if he just couldn’t stop himself. “She must have been quite tall," he observed. "I’d look lovely in it, even as is."

“Are you gay, Orihara?” Shiki heard himself asking, no formal speech and no honorific.

“For the most part. Yes,” Orihara admitted with ease. “But I don’t have a boyfriend either.”

“Why did you come here?” Shiki demanded.

“That is not an easy question to answer.” Orihara turned around to face him and smiled. “I jumped at the chance to get to know where and how you lived. And I wanted to see how you fared. And I can use that fur, really. I’m passionate about my coat collection. It turned out to be a costly and complicated endeavor seeing as these are mostly custom made but at least it motivates me not to ever gain weight.”

“I will now have to move out of here.”

“You will only have to move if you don’t trust me at all, Shiki-san,” Orihara said lightly.

“Only fools trust you,” Shiki pointed out.

Orihara smiled knowingly before his hand caught Shiki’s, his fingers infallibly searching for the sliver of skin that was softer where the ring used to be and closing around it once they located it.

Shiki didn’t find the resolve within himself to stop him as Orihara pulled that hand towards his face and started kissing Shiki’s knuckles, his tongue lashing out.

“Are you a fool, Shiki-san?” He whispered.

The morning light shone into his eyes at such an angle they were the color of fresh blood.

The headache and the haze in Shiki’s mind were suddenly gone, his brain short-circuiting with excitement.

“I’ll come here again,” Orihara declared, looking him in the eye, daring him to move to a new place. “And I want you to be here, waiting.”

Then he let Shiki’s hand go, put on his coat and left the apartment, the front door clicking shut behind him.

 

-

 

Shiki relieved himself in the shower after Orihara had left. It had been months since he’d last been with his wife and he willed himself to imagine her but she seemed so ethereal to him now after he’d seen her grow frail and inhumanly thin and pale and dead he was probably never going to be able to conjure a more sensual image of her again.

Orihara on the other hand, feasting on his weakness, licking the base of his ring finger, was alive, young and pulsating with life force.

Izaya… Shiki allowed himself to think as he came, the informant’s first name feeling unfamiliar to him.

It was too soon, he thought, pressing his forehead to the tiles to cool his head. Rebound sex was always a bad idea. Orihara inviting himself into his bed was not good news. Men, especially men like him, were not the way to go if Shiki ever wanted a boring little family of his own.

He decided to move right away. Then, for whatever foolish reason, he decided against it.

 

-

 

The second day he spent not working started on a high note. Having slept through the night on the bed in the bedroom, even plagued by dreams and nightmares, he still had got more rest than he had had in weeks.

In the morning his wife’s mother called asking for money. He sent her the amount she wanted right away, presuming it was something his wife used to do even though she had never told him about it.

He carried the gun on him the whole day, wondering what Orihara had in mind when he’d tried to dissuade him from moving.

Nothing happened until evening, though. He fell asleep again watching television in the living room, his wife’s fur still draped over the back of the couch, keeping him company.

Then the doorbell rang, jerking him awake. It was past midnight and an old samurai movie was playing on TV.

He opened the door.

He would have expected Orihara to wait longer than that before showing up again but there he was, wearing a fur trimmed jacket and not a coat, roughened up as if he had been in a fight, his clothes and hair dirty and his palms scraped raw.

“I need a shower,” he said as if that made sense as a thing to say.

Shiki led the way to the guest bathroom without a word. He was not wearing a jacket, putting the holster with the gun on display over his dress shirt.

“It’s just me, Shiki-san,” Orihara spoke up. “You don’t need that gun.”

Once in the bathroom he started undressing, not caring about Shiki watching him from the doorway but not making it any seductive either. His body was covered in bruises and scars.

“Who beat you up?” Shiki asked even though he was almost certain he knew. Then again, it was the middle of the night. Had those fights everyone knew about really lasted so long into the night?

“Everybody knows who beats me up all the time, Shiki-san. You already know that, too.” Orihara snorted.

He removed a blood drenched folding knife from the pocket of his pants and put it at the edge of the sink before taking them off. A red imprint was left as the knife slipped and clattered into the sink.

Shiki left the bathroom before Orihara took off his underwear.

He’d never seen Orihara like that before, fresh out of a fight, dirty, hurt and devoid of his usual elegance. He was like some kind of a small animal now, restless, abused, hissing and biting, but not really dangerous, whatever he himself might have been thinking. It was a sad sight and Shiki would have rather had him stop picking fights like that before he ended up with a broken spine or dead. If Orihara were to die, which might have been for the best in a lot of ways, there were more merciful ways for that to happen to him.

Shiki went back to the living room, turned the TV off, took the fur from the back of the couch and carried it to the closet. He would have hated it if Orihara touched it ever again. What he’d done so far with it was enough to change it halfway from his wife’s possession into an object that emanated certain darkness. Shiki's hand twined itself in the black fur. Orihara was such bad news it might have made sense to shoot him and just be done with it. Shiki actually pondered that course of action for a moment before going into the bedroom, removing the holster and hiding the gun in the end.

He headed back to the guest bathroom, anticipation of what he might find there coiling in his stomach.

Orihara was out of the shower, a towel hanging too low on his hips, an ugly bruise forming on his side and a self-assured smile adorning his face. His grace was back, the raw edge neatly covered up again.

The bloodied knife lay in the sink, making a mess of this place which was otherwise impeccably clean.

“What do you want?” Shiki asked.

“I like you," Orihara answered, licking his lips. "And I can see you are in pain,” he offered.

“Likewise, Izaya,” Shiki let the name roll off his tongue, the pleasantries dropped.

“I suppose." Orihara scowled. "Let's see if we can help each other unwind, shall we? I always wanted to see your tattoos," he admitted. "But I wouldn’t have approached a married man to be kept around as some sort of a plaything. It's fair game now, though."

Actually, it was much too soon for this to be fair. And that was not all there was to it, Shiki figured, because Orihara was not ‘Let’s see…’ at all, rather he always had everything planned several steps ahead. What was the endgame in his mind, though?

“Don’t think so much, Shiki-san.”

Him not thinking surely would have been convenient, Shiki noted, even as Orihara approached him, losing the towel from around his hips on his way. He was hard and trembling when he reached him and forced himself into his arms, his skin cool and damp under Shiki’s fingers.

Once close, he started unbuttoning Shiki’s shirt. He hissed when Shiki’s hand wrapped itself around his erection but didn’t falter in fiddling with the buttons, removing the shirt in the end, exposing the tattoos.

His fingers lingered over the design, caressing it with apparent fascination while Shiki pumped his length, indeed not thinking about what he was doing.

The interest in the tattoos was so misguided and typical of a katagi, Shiki was almost disappointed as he himself considered his tattoos a failure. He had nothing close to the full body suit and he was probably never going to have it. It took too much traveling out of Tokyo for lengthy periods of time to visit the artist in the countryside for it to be worth it to him, as devoted as he was to his job in the city.

Part of him might have not liked the pain that much either. And that part was growing as he got older.

Orihara moaned into his chest. Shiki couldn't tell if he was pretending or if it really felt good to him. Had he ever wanted this for real? Or was it a part of some plan?

He looked up at Shiki as he came all over both their stomachs, his face young and vulnerable and foolish.

He was going to die with that attitude, Shiki thought, sooner than he might have liked. Maybe becoming soft with age could have saved him from his self-destructive pursuits as well but it wasn't a given he was going to have enough time to age in the first place and realize how frail it all really was before it was too late.

Shiki thought how he had got a lot of his own lessons already. Like the one when one day he was going to be a father and the next day it was just a lot of blood and a twitching blob escaping onto the tiled floor of this very bathroom.

Hazy red eyes stared at Shiki, uncomprehending, as he left the room, starting to feel sick when he caught sight of the blood in the sink.

He went to the living room and sat there in the darkness, his body still aroused but his mind not interested. He would have never suspected his weakness to be so acute, he thought, trembling.

He buttoned up his shirt ignoring the sticky residue on his stomach for now and lit up a cigarette, the tip glowing in the dark room.

Some time later Orihara went out of the bathroom in his dirty clothes, his jacket in his hand, and started fumbling for the light switch.

Shiki shuddered at the pain in his fingertips as he realized the cigarette he had been smoking had meanwhile burnt down to nothing.

“Don’t.”

Orihara faltered.

Shiki preferred the faint light of street lamps filtered through the curtains. He’d always liked this particular illumination in this room at night. But it was time to let go of this place, too, he decided at once. It was no good for him and he was going to move after all.

“Shiki-san.” Orihara approached him, dropped his jacket, whispered his name, pushed his legs apart and kneeled between them. “Do you want me to…”

“Go away,” Shiki said despite the pull he felt in his insides at the thought of what Orihara apparently wanted to do and the possibilities of what that night could have still turned out to be.

A shadow of some feeling Shiki couldn’t identify in the near darkness passed over Orihara’s features. Shiki doubted he was used to anyone refusing him.

Here he was, Shiki thought, his weakness acting up and Orihara of all people looking on.

He reminded himself who that man was, not what he did for a living because who was he to have some qualms about that, but what he did just to play. Shiki had made the mistake of accessing that forum of his where he lured teenagers into taking their own lives once. It left him disconcerted for days before he forced himself back into the pleasantries of their business relation.

He should have picked up a random woman, he realized, instead of letting Orihara of all people sneak so close.

Now his face as it had been when he’d come was etched into Shiki’s mind and it was going to stay there. He doubted it was ever really going to go away.

“I’ll go,” Orihara agreed with a sigh. “But we will see each other again, Shiki-san.”

He kept looking at Shiki as he stood up and put on his jacket.

“I’ll see you again,” he said before leaving.

 

-

 

The third day off work started bad and ended worse.

Orihara’s lingering presence, even though he’d left in the flesh, disturbed Shiki’s sleep all night until he found himself at the kitchen table, putting his gun back together, not remembering having taken it apart.

He was still wearing the clothes from last night and the sickening scent of dried sperm invaded his nostrils once he paid attention but despite the urgent need it took alot to drag himself into the shower.

His wife was slipping away from him, he realized, leaving his dreams, replaced by dark red eyes and Orihara’s bruised body. It was too soon for this to be decent and that might have been one of the reasons why Orihara was even doing this. Maybe he got off on the impropriety, being himself. Maybe he just chose to attack when the prey was weak.

In the morning Shiki went to the guest bathroom only to find the knife and the crusted blood untouched in the sink. He put on plastic gloves and cleaned it all up, ending up with Orihara’s knife in his hand. A Centofante 3 with some nicks on the blade, it seemed it had been through a lot to the point the mechanism was screwed and didn’t open the usual way but required some strange twisting. It was anyone’s guess why Orihara had carried a damaged knife. One could die in a fight because of details like that, after all. He might have meant something by that because he’d surely left it behind on purpose but Shiki couldn’t understand what.

He opened and closed it a few times, the clicking echoing in the bathroom. It was headed for the trash, he decided. Then he folded it and put it in his pocket for the time.

It was his last day off work and he needed to move. He made the necessary calls to arrange for a new place and the manpower to move his things there.

That was it for Orihara showing up when he felt like it and for the risk of him having sold Shiki’s address to some parties interested in eliminating him so that this could end with him laughing at Shiki’s stupidity once he got the news of his death. That was it also for the place where he’d spent all his married years, with its two guest bedrooms, one that was supposed to be something else.

He decided to go outside for the day to be sure and wasted most of it away driving around and smoking, two activities that put his mind at ease, even while the first one was something he rarely got to do these days, usually traveling in a limousine with a driver. He thought back to the day his wife had miscarried. How he had taken her to the hospital and then left right away to drive around. She might have never forgiven him for not sticking around on that day and holding her hand instead.

It was already evening when he got the call surmising the suspicious activity happening around the place where he used to live, people connected to a rival yakuza faction and suspicious cars having been seen there. It seemed some other higher-up had taken this matter over during the day, too, possibly because they didn’t want to bother him on his day off. He wondered which one and didn’t really like that level of meddling in his affairs.

So what it amounted to, Orihara had sold his address after all, it seemed. Shiki stopped the car and took a deep breath.

The usual response would have been calling certain people with the order to go and dispose of him, mercifully, of course, just a bullet to the head, no torment and not much fear, which might not have even been the worst possible end for him. That’s it, if he still could be found. But Orihara having been at his place the night before had changed things around even though it shouldn’t have.

That might have been precisely the reason why he had showed up. It made Shiki eager to wait and try to understand.

At this point he regretted letting Orihara go the previous night without fucking him first. It might have been his only chance after all and it would have felt better now, even being made a fool of, to at least have had him in bed before.

Then Orihara called him, interrupting that train of thought. His voice was not making anything better.

“Shiki-san, I know you haven’t been home today. That was a very smart decision, too. Please never go there again. I’ll be at my office tonight. Do what you want with that information. I’d like to take a closer look at your tattoos. On the other hand I’m not eager to stare down the barrel of a gun. But I’ll trust you. Just like you trusted me. And I hope you’re a better person than I am,” he ended the call with that.

It didn't take a better person to let him get away with something like that, though. Rather, one needed to be some kind of a fool.


	2. Chapter 2

“The man who came for my wife’s things?” Shiki spoke into the phone, smoking outside his car.

“Yes. We suspect he leaked the address. That’s surprising, considering he’s been working for us for years. He might have been blackmailed, though. Maybe. Too bad we can’t interrogate him.”

“Too bad indeed,” Shiki agreed.

He had already been informed that the man was dead. He had taken his own life which was only fitting, Shiki supposed, considering who was behind things.

The rest of Awakusu-kai apparently didn’t know about Orihara’s involvement in this situation and with the only witness gone didn’t have much to go on to find out. The cameras in Shiki’s apartment building just so had happened not to be working these past few days, either.

“But being targeted on the very day you moved out is quite a coincidence, Shiki.”

“Maybe I’m just not some fool to be randomly slaughtered, Aozaki-san,” even as he said that, Shiki thought back to the previous day and his decision to stay home then even while Orihara had already known his address. Truth he’d been carrying a gun on him all day but would that have been enough?

“So, you know something,” Aozaki noted. “Care to share?”

“Later. I’m heading to the headquarters now,” he said and finished the cigarette. “I’ll be solving my problems myself from now on.”

It seemed this was as much grieving time as he was going to get, he thought, what with Orihara breathing down his neck.

 

-

 

The black limousine and the two cars that had been following it stopped at the curb.

Orihara was standing on the sidewalk under the yellow light of the street lamps, looking down at his phone. He was wearing a long black coat despite the night being fairly warm.

Shiki didn't tell his men what had actually happened but he did tell them that this was not the usual meeting on friendly terms and that Orihara had some explaining to do this time around.

One of Shiki’s men got out of one of the cars that had been following the limousine and approached Orihara to pat him down, taking his phone away first. He retrieved another phone and a folded knife out of his pockets among other things he gave back to him. Then he removed the batteries from the phones before dropping these and the knife into a bag he was carrying. He opened the door of the limousine, grabbed Orihara’s arm and pushed him inside.

“That’s some rough treatment,” Orihara muttered, tumbling onto the seat. “Hello, Shiki-san,” he said politely once he straightened up, greeting Shiki as if it was a regular business meeting. “I’m glad I was right when I told you I would see you again,” he added with a smile.

Shiki couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. What he expected to happen now was likewise anyone’s guess.

“So, which way will it go?” Orihara asked once the limousine started moving, sounding calm if genuinely interested. “Am I a boyfriend who misbehaved or should I just get ready to die? Or have you thought of something truly twisted to punish me with first, Shiki-san?”

Shiki wondered why Orihara had betrayed him. Was it about pocketing the money the other faction had paid for his address? Entertainment? Pushing him so he would wake up from the lethargy that had engulfed him once his wife had got sick?

“You’re not easy to rile up, are you, Shiki-san?” Orihara sighed. “Unlike some other people. If I did the same thing back when your wife was still around, that would have probably done the trick though, right?” he asked with a malicious smile.

“Did you deal directly with the other faction?” Shiki asked, ignoring Orihara’s insolence.

“Of course not. They won’t be happy about my information turning out not to be so useful but it won’t be Orihara Izaya they will blame.”

“That’s admirable foresight,” Shiki commented. “But you may well enough get badly hurt or dead here so why did you show up?”

“It’s not that I showed up,” Orihara pointed out. “I invited you, Shiki-san, not the other way around. It’s you who wouldn’t go into my office after what happened. So, we’re meeting on your terms. And I’m here because I want to see what kind of a man you are.”

“If you made that deal a day earlier, I would have been a dead one,” Shiki said in an even voice.

Orihara smiled.

“If you could be killed that easily, I wouldn’t have needed you, Shiki-san,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Not even as my contact in the Awakusu-kai. I rely on your expertise when I work for you so I’d prefer for it to be there.”

“You’re an insolent brat.”

“That may well enough sum it up,” Orihara agreed. “But the question stands: who are you, Shiki-san?”

The clarity of Shiki’s thoughts was a welcome change after months of it slipping away from him but it wasn’t enough to offer simple solutions to a situation like that.

What he was faced with was Orihara at his best, playing with his own life as if it didn’t matter. A breathtaking sight in a way even though it was but a display of foolishness undertaken for unfathomable reasons.

But if Shiki succumbed to the allure and showed him mercy he would develop a weakness, one Orihara would happily exploit later on. If he let Orihara keep their business relation after a stunt like that, he would really trample all over Awakusu-kai one day and who could even blame him. There were obvious things Shiki should have been doing having caught someone who amounted to be a rival spy, after all. Even simply shooting Orihara dead would have been a show of goodwill considering the usual course was torturing for information first.

Dark red eyes were looking at him expectantly.

Shiki hoped his face didn’t show any emotion he didn’t care to display.

The limousine stopped in a nondescript parking lot when they reached their destination. The other cars parked on both its sides, leaving ample space for the passengers to get out.

“Now I’m really wondering what you will do to me.” Orihara sighed. “I’m not exactly bothered though. Back when I started doing business with the yakuza I already considered what might happen to me one day. Maybe even I let my imagination run wild. Whatever you throw at me, I doubt it will surprise me a great deal, Shiki-san. But…” his voice grew softer. “...is that a goodbye?”

Shiki ignored him and got out of the car. He walked around it, opened the door on the other side and pulled Orihara out.

“Is that a goodbye?” Orihara asked him again.

Shiki’s men got out of the other cars.

“That’s for you to wonder,” Shiki answered. “Follow me without making it seem forced unless you want the rest of Awakusu-kai to know you’re no longer on friendly terms with us,” he commanded softly before letting him go.

Orihara walked behind him dutifully, two more men tagging along. The rest of them stayed around the cars.

It was a nondescript apartment complex, its walls freshly repainted white, plants dying in the lobby, cramped elevator, dimly lit corridors on the last floor, door scratched at the bottom as if by a dog, the smell of dust and stale cigarette smoke trapped inside the apartment.

Shiki closed the door once Orihara entered, leaving the other men outside.

He pushed Orihara against it and took a hold of his chin. There was no fear in Orihara’s eyes.

One moment his blood boiled with anger, the other the feel of warm skin under his fingertips was twisting it into want.

Orihara let himself be kissed but didn’t really reciprocate even though his arms closed around Shiki’s neck.

“I would prefer to know what it is you’ll do to me later, Shiki-san,” Orihara said once the kiss was over.

“You’re in no position to demand anything.”

“No? Even if we fuck? I would imagine that would make us quite close by the standards civilized people adhere to.”

“We haven’t fucked yet.”

“But we will,” Orihara stated matter-of-factly before acting on that statement and removing his coat and then taking off everything else but his underwear, baring that pale scarred body with jutting out bones that he seemed to be quite proud of. “It may be my last chance to sleep with a yakuza like everyone always suspected me of doing and I will take it, Shiki-san. Like I told you already, I’m not immune to the charms of your kind of men.”

Shiki had heard these rumors Orihara was referring to, suspecting there were even some about them sleeping together already. He wouldn’t have put it past Orihara for his career as an informant having started in someone’s bed either. He liked playing around, messing with someone’s head, possibly for his own gain, even if it took putting his own body on the line. He had demonstrated as much the previous day.

Shiki wondered if taking him up on this offer was safe but he didn’t see how it wasn’t. It was his turf and his men were around, Orihara was stripped of his weapon and while he could fight, he was not at the level to cause serious harm with his bare hands to someone like Shiki.

Still, it was unreasonable at this point, Shiki thought, his thumb brushing Orihara’s lips. After what he’d done it should have been out of the question.

Tenderness seemed to set Orihara on edge because he grabbed Shiki’s hand, searched for the spot where the wedding ring used to be again with a know-it-all smile, rubbed it, and then dragged it down to the hem of his underwear instead.

Still, Shiki leaned in to kiss him again before he slid it off. Orihara didn’t seem to enjoy being kissed. He was opening his mouth but that was the extent of his effort. It made him seem unwelcoming or inexperienced.

The second option inadvertently excited Shiki quite a bit.

Orihara sighed when Shiki’s hand closed around his erection.

“Are you afraid, Izaya?” Shiki asked him once they pulled apart from the kiss, using his first name.

“Of course,” Orihara answered, his face showing no fear at all. “I don’t know what you will do to me. If I knew, I wouldn’t be here, Shiki-san.”

A shadow of a self-assured smile passed over Orihara’s features and he looked into Shiki’s eyes challengingly, as if daring him to do something drastic or interesting, if only to satiate his curiosity.

Shiki grabbed his naked body, turned him around to face the door and held him close, letting him feel the weight of the gun in the inside pocket of his jacket, hoping to smear that self-assurance right off his face.

Orihara shuddered in his grasp. It was what made Shiki start to get hard.

“Since you came to me to fuck, I hope you brought the necessities with you,” he whispered into his ear.

“Your men will hear us if you fuck me here,” Orihara observed. “And yes, in the pockets of my coat. The guy who patted me down earlier looked at me knowingly when he found the lube. Was it my reputation he was thinking about or maybe yours, Shiki-san?”

“My reputation is spotless,” Shiki stated simply.

“Now that you’re no longer a married man, it doesn’t need to be, right?”

Shiki let him go and reached down for his coat. He found the lube and the condoms in the pockets and uncapped the little container. The scent was neutral when he put some on his fingers.

Once he straightened up his other hand rested on the nape of Orihara’s neck and then moved to where his pulse could be felt under his fingers. It quickened right away, only because it could now be observed.

“Do you do this a lot?” Shiki asked in an even voice, his slickened fingers sliding down Orihara’s spine bump by bump before dipping between his buttocks, finding his entrance and starting to massage it.

“You’ll find out for yourself, Shiki-san,” Orihara answered, splaying one of his hands on the door to support himself.

“Or I’ll hurt you because you chose to keep it secret.”

“That’s fine,” Orihara whispered. “And you’re not my first.”

Orihara's other hand wrapped itself around his own cock and started rubbing it quite desperately as Shiki pushed a finger into him. His pulse quickened some more.

Shiki pushed the second finger into the unrelenting tightness. The other men Orihara might have been with must have been old news.

“I’m sorry if I’m disappointing you, Shiki-san,” Orihara said through clenched teeth.

He was still stroking himself and he still didn’t choose to use Shiki’s first name, if he even knew it, though he most likely did, and didn’t even drop the honorific.

Shiki didn’t really care at this point what Orihara’s problem was, though.

Things could wait after he was through with him.

All kinds of things.

He pushed the third finger inside and Orihara buried his face in his forearm, braced against the door.

Then he stretched him and prodded inside, reaching deeper and closer to the base of his cock from inside until with a curl of his fingers he elicited the first moan out of Orihara’s throat that was muffled right away by him biting his own hand.

Shiki wondered if his face was already looking vulnerable like the previous day, his cunning nature stripped away from him, and he briefly regretted turning him around. On the other hand, he didn’t want to see it. Not before what he most likely needed to do later.

“That’s enough,” Orihara whispered.

“No.”

He fingered him some more, a part of him enjoying Orihara’s distress, probably at the thought of the sounds that were escaping him being heard by the bodyguards on the other side of the door. He was no longer stroking himself, using both hands to support himself against the door instead. His pulse was like that of a small animal devoured by a predator.

Shiki took his fingers out of him and let go of his neck.

Orihara waited while Shiki fumbled with his clothes and the condom, obviously trying to listen to the sounds on the other side of the door. The men out there were talking in hushed voices. It was impossible to tell about what.

“Are you happy about this being the way it is?” Shiki asked. “Because you could have approached me a few months down the line like a normal person.”

“I’m not a normal person.”

Shiki positioned himself and Orihara’s body took him in fairly easily at this point. He didn’t even make any sound. He was back to stroking himself right away, pushing back against the hardness inside him. His own pleasure seemed to be the only thing that concerned him and Shiki couldn’t help but wonder which one of them was really in control of the situation at hand.

“You're planning something,” he observed, though Orihara seemed to be past the point where such things could be discussed with him.

A low moan escaped him as Shiki started moving inside him.

Shiki was obviously satisfied with what was happening but a part of him was screaming in warning, a well honed sense of self-preservation telling him something was not adding up about this whole situation.

Orihara came into his own hand, his inner muscles clenching down hard.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered once he caught his breath in a barely there voice.

Even as Shiki’s orgasm hit him he could already hear the gunshots outside. The warmth engulfing him felt suffocating and he knew that was it for him and Orihara, if only because one of them was soon going to die.

He slipped out of him, removed the condom and put his pants back on right away.

“How did they know where to find us?” he asked while further gunshots were echoing in front of the building.

Orihara turned around and started picking up his clothes. He straightened up once he had his pants on.

“Do you have my knife, Shiki-san?” he asked, his face flushed, his expression vaguely disinterested at this point. “I guess you do. And I already know who you are. You’re a sentimental fool.”

Shiki walked up to the window, stood next to it by the wall and looked outside carefully. In the yellow light of the street lamps down below, he could see the dead bodies on the ground next to his limousine but not the attackers.

He opened the window slowly, yanked that knife out of his pocket, looked at it but saw nothing out of the ordinary at first glance. But there was apparently a reason the blade couldn’t be opened in a normal way. Some kind of a GPS transmitter had been installed in there? He threw it out of the window, not having any more time to analyze it.

Meanwhile Orihara put the rest of his clothes on and was clearly on his way out of the apartment.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Shiki asked him, reaching for his gun.

Orihara stood still, his back to him.

Shiki walked up to him and pressed the gun to the back of his head.

At least one of the men who had been guarding the door must have made the mistake of rushing downstairs because shots were now echoing from down there. Someone somewhere in the building screamed. The police was probably already on its way.

“You can imagine how you will feel if you kill me now, Shiki-san. But I guess it’s your choice,” Orihara said.


End file.
